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Reddit-runner t1_j29u04h wrote

Reply to comment by binary_spaniard in SpaceX launches Israeli reconnaissance satellite and lands rocket, marking 61st and final flight of 2022 by marketrent

It's very interesting what you can do when you have a rocket with a high maximum payload mass, but relatively low launch cost.

Suddenly you don't need a payload anymore that fits your rocket "perfectly". You can just launch practically any payload as long as it is not too heavy. 6,000km? Okay. 600kg? Doesn't matter.

Extrapolating this to fully reusable systems we will see pretty wild ranges of payload masses, even without ride share.

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robertojh_200 t1_j2a9u02 wrote

This is the real core of the promise of starship. 100 tons to LEO or the moon, that opens up the solar system for cheap.

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Reddit-runner t1_j2ac259 wrote

Sadly this thinking still seems to resonate with too few people...

You will find far too often comments on such systems being "wasteful".

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robertojh_200 t1_j2acp0h wrote

Or just outright discredit it because of musk.

Never mind spaceX being the most successful, and advanced, launch organization in history. people are blinded by cynicism and hatred, and so often they don’t even realize it themselves

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Reddit-runner t1_j2aft0h wrote

I can't count anymore the number of discussions I had about why building a giant Mars ship in LEO with Starship will neither be cheaper nor faster than riding Starship to Mars directly.

Dedicated and highly specialised vehicles for every little task seems to be ingrained into most minds. (Honestly I blame the architecture of the Apollo program for this)

And on top of that comes the illogical dismissal of everything SpaceX/Musk, as you said.

It's an uphill battle for something that actually should excite people naturally.

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robertojh_200 t1_j2ai51v wrote

Certainly not anytime soon. I could see a space-built ship, like an Aldrin cycler, coming about down the line when we have more established manufacturing infrastructure in space already. The gravity well of earth is something that we are going to eventually have to circumvent, as it’s the single most prohibitively expensive part of space travel.

But we can’t get to that point without multipurpose vehicles like starship, the ships that will establish the infrastructure in space that is needed in order to build something like that in the first place. Colonies, manufacturing, in situ resource utilization, etc. all of that doesn’t happen until starship launches, and hopefully it’s only the first. I’m also excited about the neutron rocket from rocket lab; it’s not as powerful as starship but it is approaching the weight class as a heavy multi purpose vehicle.

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wowsosquare t1_j2cq82d wrote

>opens up the solar system for cheap.

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